Heretofore, thread belt loops have been formed and held by hand on top of a garment positioned on the sewing area of a sewing machine and the machine has been operated to sew or tack the loop to the garment. The forming of the thread loop by hand is relatively costly in terms of time consumption and produces variations in repeatability of loop size. Further, because a hand of the operator is usually placed close to the sewing path to position the thread loop, there is a danger of injury.
While semi-automatic apparatus has heretofore been proposed to form a thread belt loop as in U.S. Pat. No. 2,906,218 and 3,095,842, such apparatus has operated by passing a thread through a doubled over portion of the garment with a needle. After this operation the thread is cut and the opposite ends of the thread are manually tied together in a time consuming operation.
Further, apparatus for sewing belt loop ribbons onto garments, such as in U.S. Pat. No. 2,730,976 and 3,841,247 are not adaptable to the formation of thread belt loops and are disadvantageous in requiring at least two spaced apart lines of stitching for fastening to a garment.